the difficulty lies more in the power of the students than
of the college. If the young men who are the natural social leaders make
simplicity the unwritten law of college social life, young Sardanapalus
will spend his money and heap up luxury in vain. The simplicity and good
sense of wealth will conquer its ostentation and reckless waste.

(_October_, 1886)

BRAINS AND BRAWN

It is towards the end of June and in the first days of July that the great
college aquatic contests occur, and it is about that time, as the soldiers
at Monmouth knew in 1778, that Sirius is lord of the ascendant. This year
it was the hottest day of the summer, as marked by the mercury in New York,
when the Harvard and Yale men drew out at New London for their race. Fifty
years ago the crowd at Commencement filled the town green and streets, and
the meeting-house in which the graduating class were the heroes of the
hour. The valedictorian, the salutatorian, the philosophical orator, walked
on air, and the halo of after-triumphs of many kinds was not brighter or
more intoxicating than the brief glory of the moment on which they took the
graduating stage, under the beaming eyes of maiden beauty and the profound
admiration of college comrades.

Willis, as Phil Slingsby, has told the story of that college life fifty and
sixty years ago. The collegian danced and drove and flirted and dined and
sang the night away. Robert Tomes echoed the strain in his tale of college
life a little later, under stricter social and ecclesiastical conditions.
There was a more serious vein also. In 1827 the Kappa Alpha Society was the
first of the younger brood of the Greek alphabet--descendants of the Phi
Beta Kappa of 1781--and in 1832 Father Eells, as he is affectionately
called, founded Alpha Delta Phi, a brotherhood based upon other aims and
sympathies than those of Mr. Philip Slingsby, but one which appealed
instantly to clever men in college, and has not ceased to attract them to
this happy hour, as the Easy Chair has just now commemorated.

But neither in the sketches of Slingsby nor in the memories of those
Commencement triumphs is there any record of an absorbing and universal
and overpowering enthusiasm such as attends the modern college boat-race.
The race of this year between the two great New England universities,
Harvard and Yale--the Crimson and the Blue--was a twilight contest, for
"high-water," says the careful chronicler, "did not occur until seven
o'clock." At half-past six he describes the coming of the grand armada and
the expectant scene in these words: "The _Block Island_ came down from
Norwich with every square foot of her three decks occupied, the _Elm
City_ brought a mass of Yale sympathizers from New Haven, and the
big _City of New York_ filled her long saloon-deck with New London
spectators. A special train of eighteen cars came up from New Haven, a
blue flag fluttering from every window. The striking contrast to the life
and bustle of the lower end of the course was the quiet river at the
starting-point. The college launches, the huge tug _America_,
the press-boat _Manhasset_, loaded with correspondents, the tug
_Burnside_, swathed in crimson by her charter party of Harvard men,
and the steam-yacht _Norma_, gay with party-colored bunting, floated
idly up-stream, waiting for the start. The long train of twenty-five
observation-cars stood quietly by the river-side, its occupants closely
watching the boat-houses across the river."

Did any fleet of steamers solid with eager spectators, or special train
of eighteen cars, or long train of twenty-five observation-cars, a vast,
enthusiastic multitude, ever arrive at any college upon any Commencement
Day in Philip Slingsby's time to greet with prolonged roars of cheers and
frenzied excitement the surpassing eloquence of Salutatorian Smith, or the
melting pathos of Valedictorian Jones? Did ever--for so we read in the
veracious history of a